Huawei has 2014 Q3 results out and seems rosy. The third largest smartphone vendor in the world by shipments share sold 16.8 million smartphones in the quarter. This is a 26% year on year increase with more focus on the mid to high end smartphones. These made 26% of smartphone shipments.
Huawei Consumer Business Group in which smartphones, tablets and modems are in made a 322% growth in the Middle East and Africa region, 98% growth in Asia Pacific and 51% for Latin America. These are 32 million devices of which 16.8 million were smartphones with more growth in the group realized in the emerging markets. If you do the math, this is just like half what the company sold in the first half of 2014.
Huawei moved from focus of mostly low end smartphones to mid to high end in the last three years and this is paying off. Smartphones like the Ascend P7 which launched earlier in the year have sold 3 million units so far, that’s after selling 1 million the first month. Ascend Mate 7 reportedly has sold 1 million units since launch (not part of this report though). The Ascend P6 launched last year is still on sale and has made 5 million units in total sales so far.
Huawei is also making a show in the 4G LTE segment with 34% of total shipments being 4G enabled smartphones. Huawei’s numbers are impressive internally and also compared to smaller vendors but will fade out in comparison to the two bigger vendors Samsung and Apple who do tens of millions for single flagship devices in less than a month.
Apple particularly has made impressive sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices of 2014 in the first two weeks of sales with Apple reporting over 10 million in first weekend of sales. Samsung did 5 million Galaxy S5 unitts in the first month.
